Battleship - Movie Review

Right, so a movie based off of a board game. Sounds like something terrible, right? That was my initial thought as well, but the first teaser trailer featured an Iowa-class battleship in action, so there was no way I was going to miss this movie on the big screen, regardless of its overall quality.
I have never been more pleased to be wrong about a movie in all my life.
Battleship is a wonderful, wonderful movie.
From start to finish, the way the movie unfolds and the story progresses, it does something that few movies actually do: it makes sense. Of course, it's a lot of far-fetched sense, but it's still sense.
Now, to answer a couple of questions, yes there is a sequence involving a named grid. No, the line "you've sunk my battleship!" is not in the movie. After rejoicing, please continue reading.
The movie begins with a brief origin of our heroes, followed by an establishment of rivalries and character traits that will become important at different parts of the movie: standard operating procedure. Think Star Trek '09 for some of this.
The alien armada, and why they do what they do, that's explained at a reasonably early point, so there's no 'wait, what?' about their actions in the initial phases. There are some questions about why they don't just slaughter everyone off the bat and have done with it, but when you watch the movie, it makes a general sort of sense. I mean, they could have just killed everyone, of course, but then you wouldn't have had a story.
For me, the real treat of the movie was not the heavy special effects or the gratuitous shots of Arleigh Burke destroyers firing everything. No, the real treat was USS Missouri being taken out to sea to be part of the defense of Hawaii. They executed that sequence so beautifully. Oh my lord, was she beautiful in this film. Bonus: Peter Berg and the crew from Universal came down to ask if they could borrow the ship for a few days. The US Navy and the conservators of the USS Missouri Museum said yes. So, they took Mighty Mo OUTSIDE of Pearl Harbor for a few days to film. Sadly, they did not reactivate her boilers or engines, nor did they reactivate any part of her armament... at least in reality. They reactivated it smashingly with CGI.
It's... just such a fun movie. A lot of people don't like it and didn't like it, but that's okay. I expected it to be terrible.
It isn't.

 

I went and saw this movie last night, I went in with pretty low expectations, so I wasn't too disapointed. It really isn't that great of a movie. The dialogue is pretty corny, the script isn't really believable, and the CGI was kind of mediocre & cartoony at times (since when do radio transmissions look like beams of light?). The promotional trailers made it seem like Liam Neeson had a bigger part than he really did, in reality, he only had a small bit part in the movie. The only saving grace to this movie was watching the Missouri being taken out one last time to save Hawaii. I would rate this movie a 4/10.

 

I havent seen it yet but its not a good sign when a movies opening weekend numbers are lower then a movie which had been out for about two weeks which was the case with battleship and avengers. I will probably wait for it to come out on DVD or BLuray

 

Avengers was pretty decent, certainly a lot better than Battleship thats for sure.

 

Battleship isn't a good movie, not by a long shot, but it is fantastically entertaining. It's like the Toho Godzilla movies, plot, acting, and dialog are sub-par, but the action makes it all worth it.

 

I had high hopes for this movie but my Navy experience totally ruined it for me. A captain leaving officer country for anything else but an inspection or shore leave? Yeah right!